Archive of Our Own ^beta

Because Danny's life is a train wreck waiting to happen, the whole thing starts over a corned beef sandwich.

"Mustard," he says, glaring at the guy behind the counter, "is the only acceptable condiment for corned beef. Not relish, not mango-pineapple salsa, not mayo, and definitely not whatever-the-hell-this-is. Mustard and Swiss cheese, how hard is that?"

"I apologize," Steve says behind him. "He's just like this. There's something wrong with him, it can't be helped."

"There is nothing wrong with me," Danny says, "there is something wrong with my sandwich. Which is made from shitty corned beef to begin with, but I was prepared to let that slide, I've come to expect that, a man can make allowances, but this stuff on it--what even is this stuff, you can't expect me to eat this."

"And yet you'll happily eat pretty much everything else on the island, unless it's actually good for you--"

"Hey, hey, back it up, there is no way this could be good for me, this is a fucked up corned beef sandwich--"

"I'm not gonna be insulted by any fucking Haole!" the cook screams, coming out of the back with an AK-47 in his right hand, because he turns out to be a psychotic arms dealer with a culinary passion, who knew? Danny only narrowly avoids getting killed for his love of corned beef, but really, considering the depth of his feelings on the subject, it's basically worth it.

"The #3 is my bestseller!" the perp screams, pinned under Danny's thighs with his hands zip-tied. "People come for miles!"

"Then people don't know what they're talking about," Danny says, digging his knee into the guy's back. "Honestly, that sauce--"

"I'll kill you," the cook growls, "you wait and see, I will come for you--"

"Yeah, there's a good reason for murder," Danny snaps, tightening the zip-tie on his wrists all the same.

Behind him, Steve--who has Danny's favorite tie knotted over the graze wound on his arm, he does these things on purpose--groans and shoves him aside. Four minutes later they've found out that this guy's been dealing weapons in the kitchen because his therapist told him to find a stress reducing hobby, and also that he screams a little when people threaten to break his fingers.

"I wasn't going to actually break them," Steve says eventually, not even wincing as the EMTs bandage the graze wound on his arm. Danny is trying not to look concerned, with limited success. "And, anyway, you got us into a gunfight over a sandwich, so you can't look at me like that."

"Corned beef is sacred," Danny says. "I would fight for it again, I'm just saying."

"What was that thing you said when I first met you," Steve says, "about how you should apologize to people if you get them shot?"

"I got you grazed," Danny points out, "and really it wasn't me, it was the sandwich. But I apologize on its behalf, I'm sure it's very sorry."

And what should happen, from there, is that Steve should bitch about his arm and Danny should bitch about the way he vaulted himself over the counter like it was the fucking Olympics. What should happen from there is that they should fight about Miranda rights and torture being unacceptable and the way Danny is about food, and it starts that way, like it always does. But Steve's crabby about his bullet wound and Danny's crabby because Steve's been shot and things have been tense this week anyway, tense because they're coming up blind on three different cases and because they're still not talking about what they're doing at night when the office is closed.

The short version of a long story is, twenty minutes later Danny's having a fight--a real fight, a knock-down drag out screaming fuck everything fight--with Steve McGarrett in front of the goddamn shave-ice place.

"You know what I just cannot begin to understand," Danny snaps, "is where the hell you get off screaming at me about a teeny tiny bullet graze when I have, to date, suffered two bullet wounds, a concussion, a torn ACL, seven lacerations requiring stitches, more bruises than I can count and an honest to god hair disaster as a direct result of your--"

"Commitment to justice?" Steve asks, dangerous. "Willingness to do whatever it takes to make this island a safer place? Yeah, Danny, I'm a terrible guy, aren't I?"

"Oh, fuck you," Danny spits, "with your sanctimonious Army bullshit--"

"Navy," Steve yells, and really, it takes a lot to make Steve yell like that. Danny almost freezes before he remembers that he is not, has never been, actually fucking intimidated by this asshole, so he holds his ground and glares.

"Whatever you want to call it," he says, "Army, Navy, ninja, whatever the hell you are, I've had it up to here with your--"

"You think I haven't?" Steve demands."You think I'm not sick to death of hearing you go on and on and on about whatever it is this week, whatever I've done or the perp's done or Rachel's done or the whole goddamn world's done to piss you off, like it doesn't get old--"

"Well excuse me that we're not all closed off shut down emotionless SEAL freaks, excuse me that not all of us can hang loose, brah--"

"And it's always that, always, god, Danny, you think I like listening to you trash my home every other day--"

"Well, yeah, of course, I can see how that would bother you because you're always manfully restraining from ripping on Jersey--oh, wait--"

"You don't live there anymore!" Steve snaps, like a slap in the face, sharp and too intense and as fucked up and over the top as he is. "You live here, and if you want to be unhappy about it fine, you do that, you go ahead, but how the hell do you expect me to--"

"I don't expect anything from you, when have I ever said I did, when have you ever even given me the chance to--and anyway how the fuck is it my fault that you are clinically incapable of staying out of my--"

"God, Danny, what the hell do you want from me?"

It comes out half furious and half unsure, like he's honestly asking, like he really doesn't know, and Danny hates him a little for making him feel like such a bastard. But mostly, mostly Danny hates him for asking, hates him because he doesn't know the answer, because there isn't an answer--Danny wants Steve to back the fuck off and close the fuck in, wants Steve to leave him alone and never, ever leave him alone. But there's no way to say that, no way for him to answer that question with Everything, McGarrett, what do you think we're fighting about here, because he's a little bit of a coward, maybe, and not afraid to admit that.

What he says, then, even though he doesn't really mean it--what he says is, "I want off this goddamn island." Steve's face goes cold and blank like it does on his worst days, with the worst criminals, and Danny does mean it suddenly, can't seem to shut himself up. "I want to be back in Jersey with actual goddamn seasons and real pizza and sandwiches that don't get you shot at, I want my kid back, I want to never look at another beach or palm tree or fucking pineapple again, and maybe that's not what you expect, McGarrett, but that's what I want, alright?"

"You know what," Steve says, suddenly calm like burning, calm in a way that itches under Danny's skin, "I'm not doing this with you right now."

He stalks off to the car and Danny's going to let him go until he remembers whose car it is, that it's his fucking car, and runs after him. Steve's already inside, doors locked, when he catches up, and he smirks up at Danny in a way that's a little too self-satisfied to be genuine.

"It's my car," Danny points out. "This is theft, asshole."

Steve actually laughs, sharp and dangerous, reminding Danny of the guy he was those first few weeks after his father died, all rough edges and raw aches. Underneath his stupid, boiling fury he recognizes that this is pointless, that they should just fucking talk about this like the adults they claim to be, but he doesn't care. And anyway it doesn't matter, because cruelty must have been the lesson they taught after torture in the SEALs, if Steve's face is anything to go by.

"What're you gonna do," he says, "arrest me? Go ahead, do it if you're gonna do it, come on. You gonna book me, Danno?"

Danny stares at him, so fucking pissed off he can't even breathe, panic eating at him under the anger, and Steve's grin widens until it looks painful. An expression Danny can't begin to comprehend--disappointment or something like it--flashes briefly in his eyes, and is gone just as fast.

"That's what I thought," he spits, and peels out of the parking lot, leaving Danny behind.

"Trouble in paradise, Haole?"

Danny glances up, a hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun, and groans. It's not enough to be left on the beach by his partner after a gigantic public fight, not enough to have Chin and Kono's cells go directly to voicemail and be forced to call Rachel, oh no. No, his life would never allow him such an easy out, and as such he's faced with Kamekona.

"Could we not?" Danny says. "I'm sure this is really entertaining for you and whatever, but I'm having kind of a bad day, so if you could just--"

"Seems to me like someone's not appreciating what he's got," Kamekona continues, sitting down on the bench next to him. It groans a little under the extra weight and Danny can feel his headache mutating into a full-on migraine, he can feel it in his bones.

"Oh good," he says, "a lecture. I was hoping for one of those, really, thank you so much, I'll just settle in, then. You want me to take notes?"

"He'elele ka moe na ke kanaka," Kamekona says, clapping him on the back. "You should remember that."

That clap on his back hits hard; Danny feels his skin itching there, like the beginning of a bruise is already forming, and sighs.

"That's great, Kamekona," he says, "that's really great. You want to tell me what it means?"

Kamekona shakes his head, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, because apparently today is national Everyone Is Impossible day.

"Look it up, Haole," he suggests. "Your ride's here."

Danny glances up. Sure enough, there's Rachel behind the wheel of her Cayenne, smirking at him under a pair of designer sunglasses. Danny hopes against hope that she's not going to be ridiculous about this, even though he knows too well it's a pipe dream. He waves goodbye to Kamekona, who is looking oddly self-satisfied, and slides into the passenger seat.

"You could have sent a driver," he points out.

"And you," Rachel says, putting the car in gear, "could have called a cab, or a squad car. Seeing as you didn't, I can only imagine that you wish to talk to me about whatever it is that's got you in such a state."

Danny spends a moment struck dumb by his own stupidity and then groans into his hands. "Okay, well, I'm an idiot--"

"This is news to you?"

"--but I definitely do not want to talk about," he finishes, glaring. "So if you could just…just sit there, okay? Quietly. Until we get to my apartment."

"Mmhmm," Rachel says, doubt heavy in her tone, but she does actually go silent. This is great for all of four seconds, and then Danny, to his own horror, discovers that he wants to talk about it.

"Goddamn it," he growls.

"You know," Rachel says, laughing now, "the thing about being married to someone for ten years is that you do actually get to know them. Come on then, out with it, I haven't got all night."

Danny opens his mouth and shuts it again. Partially it's just because it's bizarre, the desire to talk to Rachel about anything other than Grace, visitation, and their ever-fluctuating hatred for one another. Mostly it's because he doesn't know how to explain "Well, I'm semi-casually sleeping with my partner," without making her run for the custody lawyers.

She sighs like she's she's several steps ahead of him and pulls the car to the side of the road. "Daniel," she says sternly, "I sincerely hope you don't imagine me blind enough to be unaware of your relationship with Commander McGarrett."

Danny can't help himself; he chokes on his own spit.

"What," he says finally, "I mean…I mean…what? How could you possibly--"

"Well, quite aside from the fact that I've actually spent time in your mutual company," she says, like just the way they talk to each other is indication enough, oh god, "our daughter sat me down last week and asked if my feelings would be too terribly hurt if you decided to marry Steve."

"Today is the worst day," Danny tells his hands, burying his face in them again. "The worst day ever."

"Yes, well," Rachel agrees, and puts the car back into gear. "Go on, then, tell me how badly you've cocked this up, I'm sure we can figure something out.

And, god help him, Danny does. He really shouldn't--he really shouldn't--but it's not like he can talk to Kono or Chin about this, not like he can call up his brother in Jersey and hash it all out. This is the kind of thing he'd turn to Steve for, except for how it is about Steve, and as it turns out Rachel is his next best option.

He only means to tell her about the fight, but instead it all spills out, he can't stop talking, never could control his stupid mouth. He tells her how it started, by accident in the aftermath of a bad case, and how it's continued, a barely-kept secret neither of them knows how to discuss. He tells her that he maybe wants more, but doesn't know how to be sure, doesn't know how to ask for it; he tells her about the way Steve looks at him sometimes, across the office or over a rifle sight, like he hates him.

"And now we're having public screaming matches," he finishes, sighing, "so maybe I should just accept that I've permanently screwed myself out of a good thing, right? Because we're not going to be able to work together if we can't--"

"Danny," Rachel interrupts. Her voice is kind, for once, and that if nothing else startles Danny into shutting up. They're sitting in the parking lot outside of his apartment, and Rachel reaches out and puts a hand on his arm, smiles at him.

"Do you know what the hardest part of living with you was?" she asks. "Aside from the dirty socks, obviously, and your temper, and your absolute inability to restrain yourself from talking about your job--"

"Can we skip ahead?" Danny says, wincing. She laughs, light and easy, and he remembers all over again that he doesn't hate her anymore, hasn't in months.

"You have a terrible habit of saying things you don't mean and meaning things you don't say," she says, her tone bordering on gentle. "And your Commander McGarrett doesn't seem to be any more in touch with his emotions than you are, as terrifying as that is. You might consider talking to him, Daniel. Without assuming the worst beforehand."

Danny's not sure what it is--his cop instincts, his natural paranoia, all the time they spent locked in battle--but he looks at her, hard, seeking signs that she's trying to sabotage him somehow. But it's just Rachel, whip-smart and too insightful, the way he remembers her from their best days. It makes something in his chest ache, a sharp pull in requiem of what was between them, and when it fades he's surprised to find he's just grateful.

"Yeah," he says, reaching for the door handle. A muscle in his back twinges; either Kamekona clapped him harder than he thought or he's getting too old to tackle rogue arms dealers over lunch. "Yeah, maybe. Thanks for the ride."

"Anytime," Rachel says, and looks as surprised as he is to realize she means it.

He takes the stairs to his apartment slowly; his back hurts more and more with every step, sharp spikes of pain that creep up the back of his neck, leave him breathless when he gets to the top. He's not sure what's happening as he fumbles for his keys and lets himself in, collapsing onto the couch. It isn't even folded out, and he wants some water, some painkillers, his bed, but all of those things are out of his reach.

He wants to call Steve too, maybe dance around apologizing and yell at him about the car, but he's asleep sitting up before he can finish the thought.

"Gooooooood morning New Jersey! It's a balmy 33 degrees out there, so make sure you bundle up this morning. We'll be playing the Boss after the break. Be sure to stay tuned to 105.5: WDHA, The Rock!"

Danny groans and rolls over, swats at the alarm by dint of muscle memory alone. He's sore all over, aching in places he didn't even remember he had muscles, and something's tugging at the back of his mind. Fuzzily, he remembers the arms dealer, the conversation with Rachel, the fight with Steve, and is already reaching for his phone to call the stupid bastard when his brain catches up to what's he's just heard.

New Jersey?

Danny's eyes slam open, and then immediately closed again. He takes a deep breath, wills himself not to scream, and very carefully reopens his left eye, which…

Oh, god. It's his bedroom. In his house. In New Jersey.

"This is a dream," he says out loud, mostly to convince himself it's true. "It's a fucking dream, Danny, breathe."

He pinches himself, closes his eyes again, and reopens them for the third time to the same scene. This is when he begins to panic in earnest.

Next to him, someone shifts, and Danny rolls over in relief to ask Steve what the hell is going on. Obviously he's having some kind of memory issue--head wound, that's probably what's happening, Steve probably forgot to check his six again in the wake of his crazy need to maim and kill, and Danny probably had to cover him and suffer his second Steve-related concussion, and that's why he can't remember what they're doing here. Steve will have an explanation, something about cleaning up the rest of the Salvo family, maybe, or a fucked up attempt at a vacation gone awry, and then Danny can stop having heart palpitations and go back to bed.

Only when he actually focuses on the person next to him, it is Rachel.

It's not the most dignified moment of his life, but Danny shrieks and launches himself out of the bed. "What the fuck?" he demands. "Rachel, oh my god, what happened, why are you here, Stan is going to kill you--Stan is going to kill me and I won't even be able to blame him, what--"

"Well," Rachel says, circles heavy under her eyes and disdain in her tone, "I must admit, this is a new one. Would you care to enlighten me as to who Stan is, or is this some kind of entrapment ploy?"

"What?" Danny cries. He's cold, dancing around on the floor in bare feet and boxers, chilled air slipping in around that window he always said he was going to fix. "Stan is your--what the hell are we--we're supposed to be in--"

"And good morning to you too," Rachel snaps, rolling her eyes. "Since I'm obviously not going to be afforded any more sleep, I'm going to have a shower. If you could abandon whatever game this is and get Grace ready for the bus, I might consider appreciating it."

She grabs her robe from where it's hanging on her side of the bed--Why is the robe here, Danny thinks frantically, why is the bedspread the same, we moved out years ago, what the fuck is going on--and walks into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. He sees a glint of gold on her left hand as she pulls the door shut, which doesn't make any sense; their wedding bands had been gold, but Stan had bought her platinum, just another sign of his unending superiority.

Then Danny looks down at his own hands and sees his wedding ring, battered from ten years of police work and bad blood, and does actually release a whimper of terror.

He's still married. He's still married. Jesus fucking Christ.

Gracie's hair is short.

He knows that's not the most important thing here--fuckfuckfuck where am I says Danny's hindbrain, an unending caterwaul of panic, but he ignores it. His daughter is in front of him, dressed already in a sweater and jeans, nothing like the uniform she has to wear at school on the island, so he can't think about anything else. Anything else is just going to have to wait.

Her hair is cropped close, hanging to just below her ears, limp and loose. He remembers her being five years old and getting gum in it, remembers how they'd had to hack three inches off to get it out--she'd cried and cried, clinging to his shirt, begging the poor girl with the scissors to stay away from her, please. She loves her hair, Gracie does, loves when Rachel French braids it, loves wearing it loose, asks Kono to tie it with ribbons at the office. Gracie's always loved her hair.

He stares at her, agog, a thousand subtle signs screaming wrong in the back of his mind, until she frowns at him and says, "Danno?"

Even her voice is off, too quiet, almost scared. Danny's heart breaks a little just from that.

"Hi, Monkey," he says, crouching low. "You want breakfast?"

She smiles at him, but it's not her normal smile. It's sad, her eyes dark, the way he remembers her being towards the end of that last terrible year, when he and Rachel couldn't keep their problems from spilling out around her. Danny's felt guilty about that for years, about the way she sniffled into her pillow even in sleep and couldn't let go of her rattiest toys, like they offered her a security he, they, couldn't.

He's been so angry for so long, so furious at losing her, so bitterly entrenched in all the things he gave up when Rachel moved her away. He's never thought about what it would have done to her to stay like this, to be surrounded by it constantly--about how much more it could hurt her to have to watch it fall apart and fall apart and fall apart.

"Yeah," Grace says. "Can I have cereal?"

"Can you have cereal," Danny repeats, dazed. Then something kicks in--some basic fatherhood instinct that's ingrained in his bones--and he grins at her with confidence he doesn't feel. He picks her up, throws her over his shoulder just to hear her laugh, and deposits her at the kitchen table.

"Can I have cereal, she asks," he says, rummaging around in the cupboards. The bowls are where they always were and his hands freeze over them, at this unfamiliar familiarity, for half a second. "Like I would ever deny my baby her Cocoa Krispies, c'mon, who do you think I am--"

"Daddy," Grace says, confused, "I can't have those, it's a school day."

"What?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Rachel says, breezing in from their bedroom. Her hair is up in a towel and there's still water on his face, but she snatches the bowl and the cereal box from him, glaring. "Oh, good, thank you ever so, make me look like the bad guy again--"

"I'm just giving the kid some breakfast!" he protests, stunned.

"You know I don't like her to have this much processed--oh, why do I even bother," Rachel snaps. She slams the bowl down on the counter and pulls a box of Raisin Bran out from behind the toaster. "Of course it doesn't matter what's healthy for her, so long as you're the favorite, right, Danny?"

"I don't--"

"No, no, you never do," Rachel says, pouring milk into the bowl and putting it down in front of Grace without pausing in her tirade. "It's always, 'I forgot,' or 'You're being ridiculous,' or 'a little bit of sugar isn't going to kill her,' but so help me, it's always me that has to be the law, even though you know I hate that--"

"Rachel, Jesus, I'm just trying to--"

"You know what, I'm not doing this with you right now," Rachel says, which--Danny isn't even sure what they're doing, except for how he's entirely sure, remembers picking stupider fights for stupider reasons with her before the end. And Steve had just, that's what Steve had…fuck. "Can I trust you not to give her a bloody cookie if I go get dressed?"

"Fine," Danny snaps, unable to control his tone, and Rachel pauses to shoot him a particularly vicious glare before she goes back into the bedroom.

Which leaves Danny in the kitchen with his daughter, gobsmacked, staring at her with mild horror as she quietly eats her cereal.

"Sorry, baby," he says, "your mom and I--"

"It's okay," Gracie says, soft and unsurprised. "I'm used to it."

--

Grace gets on the bus, Rachel goes to work, and Danny sits down at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He's--okay. He's in Jersey and he's still married and he's--he's going to have to figure this out. A small, logical voice that he doesn't want to listen to is saying things about amnesia, saying that he's obviously just woken from some kind of dream, but that's impossible. He can't have dreamed up Kono and Chin, can't have invented Rachel's divorce lawyers and Stan and the brutal pain of packing up this house, can't have simply imagined Steve McGarrett and his crazy eyes and chiseled jaw and roundhouse kick--

"Steve," Danny says, frankly shocked it took him this long to realize it. Steve, Steve's been everywhere, Steve will know what to do here--Steve will have something, some option for him. Danny finds his cell in the bedroom, his old one, plugged into the charger. He dials with shaking fingers, the futility of this already registering, and holds the phone to his ear.

"This call cannot be completed as dialed," says a voice, tinny and computerized. "Please hang up and try your call again."

Frantic, Danny tries the number for Five-0 headquarters, tries Chin and Kono's cells. The first two are disconnected, but Kono answers after three rings.

"Kono," Danny says, "oh, Kono, thank god, it's Danny--"

"Danny who?" Kono asks. She sounds exhausted, and Danny remembers that it's four in the morning in Hawaii. He feels bad about that, but not bad enough to shut up.

"Danny Williams," he says, desperate. "Kono, come on, you know me--look, I'm in trouble, okay, I'm back in Jersey and I'm--"

"I'm sorry," Kono says, "but I don't know who the hell this is. I think you've got the wrong Kono, brah."

"No," Danny says, "no, I don't, I really don't, Kono, please, I need you to go down to Five-0 headquarters and check my flight logs, I need you to get Steve--"

"Where?" Kono says. "And who? Seriously, man, I'm trying to sleep here, I'm on shift in an hour and a half, either give me a good reason to--"

"On shift?" Danny cuts in. "We don't--is there a case, Steve's gotta be crazy to be calling you in for, what, a six AM-- "

"I don't know who Steve is!" Kono says. "But I'm a cop, okay, so when I tell you I want you to get off the phone I mean get off the phone."

"Kono, please--"

"For fuck's sake," Kono says, and hangs up on him.

Danny has exactly four seconds to process this before his phone buzzes in his hand. He picks it up without a word, holds it to his ear, and is badly startled when he hears James McNally say "Williams? Where the hell are you?"

"Captain?" Danny breathes.

"No," McNally says, "it's somebody else wondering why you're 20 minutes late to work, yes, of course, Williams, what's wrong with you? Now, either you tell me where you are or you get your ass in here, because--"

"Yeah," Danny says, on his feet already, propelled by instinct and memory more than anything else, "yeah, Captain, sorry, sorry, I'll be there in ten."

"See that you are," McNally growls, sounding mollified, and disconnects.

--

The drive to the station is as familiar as breathing, which actually makes it weirder--Danny takes the curves too fast, like he's going to be outrun the sense of unease threatening to engulf him. The radio is set to WDHA, but he has to turn it off after five minutes, because hearing Jim Monoghan's well-worn prattle makes him want to throw up. He drives by his mother's house, solid and real like he was never gone, drives by Gracie's school and the public park. His car, the same as ever but two years older, rattles even more than he remembers, and he has to smack the dashboard three times to get the heat working properly.

This isn't my life, he thinks wildly, this isn't my life, this isn't my life, but he parks in his spot and walks into the building anyway.

And, the thing is…the thing is it is his life, to a certain degree. His desk is in the same place it always was, the water cooler hasn't moved an inch, there's still a mostly-empty box of Dunkin' Donuts sitting on the intake counter. Mikey, his partner, greets him like he's never been gone, and McNally gives him shit for being late, and when he throws himself into the case files, desperate for the distraction, the welcome bliss of proper police procedure settles over him like a blanket.

He reaches out, once, while they're in the middle of interrogating a suspect, to put a restraining hand on Mikey's arm. Mikey looks at him like he's grown a second head and Danny realizes that Mikey's not going to punch this guy or hold him out the window or threaten him with ninja moves, because Mikey isn't Steve.

It's a more painful thought than it should be, really. For all he bitches about Steve's refusal to play by the rules, he never thought he'd miss it.

Then there's the thing at the end of the day. Danny's halfway through a report on the interrogation, not seeing any reason being completely fucking unmoored should keep him from being a decent cop, when Mikey taps him on the shoulder.

"Five o'clock, buddy," he says.

"So?"

"So," Mikey says, slowly, like Danny's a crazy person, "you have to go home."

Danny stares at him; in all his years on the force, he'd never once left the office before six. "And why is that, exactly?"

Mikey throws his hands up in the air. "Really, man, don't do this to me. You can't make a guy pick up your slack for a year and a half and then pull this shit--do you want me to give you the speech you gave me? About saving your marriage for Gracie's sake? It was very heartfelt, I don't know if I'll be able to it justice, what with the waterworks and--"

"I did not cry," Danny snaps, because regardless of his memory gaps, he knows this much is true. "I do not cry ever, there is no circumstance in which I would have cried, what the hell--"

"Yeah, yeah," Mikey says, rolling his eyes. "Talk less and drive more, alright? The last thing I want to hear is you bitching about Rachel tomorrow."

"Not like this'll stop him," the kid at the next desk grumbles. Danny doesn't even know this guy--he's a rookie, too new for Danny to remember--but he slots that detail away for later. If he and Rachel are unhappy enough that he's talking about it to rookies at work…

"Shut up, Camden," Mikey says. It comes out easily enough, with just a hint of that rough protectiveness Danny had come to rely on over the years. Steve, the crazy bastard, would have barked it, and Danny is stunned to realize he misses that too, that he's gotten to the point where things being done the right way is actually unsettling.

He does say his goodbyes, though, less out of familial duty and more because he wants the time in his car to think, and heads out.

He's leaving at five every day. That means that--well, he'd had a fight with Rachel, towards the end, about his work schedule. She'd said he needed to spend less time at the station, he'd said she needed to be less selfish, and they'd screamed about it until Gracie came to the door, eyes wide and terrified, and shut them both up. He'd come home to find Rachel packing a week later.

So maybe he'd taken her seriously, in this…world, reality, whatever it is. Maybe his panic over the whole thing, over losing Rachel and keeping Gracie happy, had broken that way instead. He'd cut back at work to be home more, but it obviously hadn't worked, because the unhappiness in his house this morning was thick and palpable, weighed on him all day.

It's the same when he gets home, that unhappiness, hanging heavy over every second. He sits through a nearly silent dinner, noting the way Rachel glares when he so much as scrapes his fork against his plate too loudly, and helps Gracie through her homework. She has trouble with problems that wouldn't have given her a second's pause in Hawaii, and that more than anything makes his voice catch in his throat.

"Goodnight, baby," he says when he puts her to bed. "Danno loves you, alright?"

"Yeah," she says softly, and for all he never cries, he wants to as he turns off the light.

He spends two weeks like that.

It goes against his every instinct, leaves the detective in him screaming to push harder, to figure this out, but he's not sure what choice he has. This is his life, for better or worse--the fact that he finds himself waking disappointed every morning, feeling wrong in his own home, is something he'll just have to work through. He fights with Rachel nearly constantly, more a reaction to his own unease than to her, though it's easy enough to fall into the pattern of less than friendly bickering.

He sleeps next to her at night and feels terrible about it, feels like they're cheating on people he seems to have invented, and is relieved beyond belief that they still seem to be suffering from the bed-death he recalls. She turns towards him in her sleep sometimes, old habits dying hard, which leaves him waking with her soft and smooth under his hands. It's nothing like waking to Steve's rough wall of muscle, not in the least because Steve's SEAL ass was always up before him, grinning at him from the next pillow. Rachel sleeps on while Danny extracts his hands, smelling faintly of the strawberry shampoo she always liked, and makes noises in her sleep Danny had all but forgotten about.

Some mornings Danny wakes before the alarm, caught by the grainy sunlight filtering through the still-busted window. He brushes Rachel's hair out of her eyes then, looks at her sleep-slack face and remembers loving her like burning, loving her so much it was hard to bear. He doesn't now, tries to but can't, and in some ways it's worse than the raw loss of her was. He knows he should work with her, should at least attempt to recapture that sense of solidity, but he can't eradicate the memories he's not even sure are real. He can't forget her face across from him in the courtroom any more than he can let go of the way he'd rattled around their empty home once she was gone. The fact that it's full again, full of dishes he hasn't seen in years and photos he'd smashed in anger, doesn't really help.

He misses Kono, her reckless kindness and blind enthusiasm, misses Chin's sharp wit and sharper eye. Mostly, though, he misses Steve. It's a constant, piercing ache, hits him when he's not expecting it, winds him out of the blue. He never thought proper police procedure would leave him feeling bereft, but it does now. He never thought he'd wake up panting, in his bed next to his wife, and feel alone.

But this is his life, for better or worse. This is his life and he has to adapt, because he's got a daughter and a job and a marriage, and his memories might be uncooperative but there's no denying that this is real. He swallows his--his grief, that's what it is, he's mourning people he maybe never knew, what does that even mean--and does what he has to do. He's home for dinner and working cases and meeting Mikey for beer. He's going by his mother's house and picking his daughter up from play dates and it's fine, really, it's not what he wants but it's fine, he's not happy but it's fine, and then one morning he's coming back from a coffee run and stops dead in his tracks.

There is a man in front of him, maybe 15 paces ahead, with the edge of a hideous tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve. He's got broad shoulders and close-cropped hair, and Danny knows those swirls of ink, knows that purposeful walk and that stupidly tight ass.

"Steve," he calls, his breath catching in his throat. "Steve!"

He turns, and for a second the buoying relief carries Danny past all the subtle errors in him, all the ways he's off. Then his brain comes online, and Danny stares, agog. It's Steve, alright, but he's too thin, even thinner than he was the first time Danny met him. His muscles stand out in stark relief from the rest of him, and there's a faded scar cutting across his left cheek that's never been there before. He looks leaner and meaner than Danny remembers him, and even his stance is strange--guarded, like he's waiting for fight or flight, like he's on the taut edge of a wire positioned for a fall.

His eyes are hard and furious, not even the edge of a smile around them, and Danny has half a second to think He doesn't know me before he's being slammed into the hood of the nearest car.

"You have four seconds," Steve hisses against his ear, "to tell me how the fuck you know who I am," and it takes all of Danny's self control not to break down and scream in the middle of the street.

Steve, because he is a distrusting paranoid bastard in any reality, actually hauls Danny to the police station with his arm twisted behind his back before he'll believe he's a cop. It's only after McNally starts screaming that Steve lets him go, and even then his eyes are narrowed and his hand is on his gun. Danny is torn between being really fucking irritated and really fucking relieved, although a small part of him--a very small part--had relished the contact so much that it wouldn't have cared if Steve broke his arm.

"So you're a cop," Steve says. "That still doesn't explain how you know who I am."

Danny, figuring he has about four seconds before Steve shoots him, does some quick thinking. Five-0 doesn't exist, he's made enough calls to be sure, which means that Steve never started it. There are a lot of potential reasons for that (Danny's not really on the up about the rules of the time-space continuum, but he's smart enough to know most of them would be beyond him), but the easiest one, the one that seems the most likely, is that Steve hadn't come across a mouthy cop in his garage. No mouthy cop meant no fight over jurisdiction, no fight over jurisdiction meant no call to the governor just to be an asshole, no call to the governor meant no Five-0, the end.

Of course, there are a thousand other ways it could have gone, a thousand other things that could have happened, but Danny's not really in a position to think through them all right now. He swallows hard, takes a calculated risk, and says, "I knew your father."

The effect is so instantaneous that Danny almost feels guilty. Steve's face opens up for a second, shock and curiosity and pain flashing across it before it closes off into blank distrust again.

"Explain," he barks, "now."

"Whoa, whoa, hello," says McNally, waving his hands. "Not sure if you got this while you were trying to break my detective's arm there, but I am actually Captain of this precinct. I'm thinking I'm gonna need an explanation before you get one, alright?"

Steve makes a noise low in his throat, a frustrated half-growl that Danny had previously associated with blowjobs, and pulls an ID out of his pocket. He's got something several shades angrier than Aneurysm Face on--Apocalypse Face, Danny thinks wildly, or maybe No Seriously It's a Real Tsunami This Time Face--as he waves it mockingly in front of McNally's nose.

"Captain Steve McGarrett, U.S. Navy," he snaps. "I'm tracking an international fugitive who was last seen here twelve hours ago, I'm taking over your precinct for the duration."

"You can't do that," says McNally.

"You got promoted," says Danny, before he can help himself, and immediately regrets it. Steve wheels on him again, ignoring McNally entirely, and narrows his eyes so far they're practically slits.

"And how," he says, "do you know that?"

"I knew your father, okay, I said that, don't look at me like that, I'll explain, just, Jesus," Danny says, and yeah, alright, maybe he's babbling a little. It's hard to keep a lid on his thoughts with Steve in front of him like this, angry and strange but still Steve. He wants to reach out and run a thumb along the scar on his cheek--he wants to bury his face in Steve's neck and breathe him in, see if he still smells like sand and surf and Irish Spring.

Instead he holds up both hands, a conciliatory gesture to Steve's control issues, and gestures towards one of the interrogation rooms.

"C'mon," he says, "you can even cuff me, if that'll make you feel better, just--just, lookit, let me tell you about it, okay, and then if you still want to do whatever violent thing you're clearly thinking of doing to me you can go ahead."

Steve stares him down for a second, and everything--McNally's shouting into the phone about jurisdiction, Mikey's "Danny, my man, what's going on," the hushed whispers between the rookies--fades out around them. His eyes are still blue-green, still flecked with brown for all they're devoid of recognition, and Danny's fingers actually itch with the need to touch him.

"Yeah," Steve says finally, "yeah, alright," and lets Danny lead him to the door.

He doesn't tell Steve the truth.

Well, how the fuck could he tell Steve the truth? Suspension of disbelief is all well and good, but Danny somehow doubts that Steve's likely to take "I knew you in another reality" as good enough reason to keep him alive. And that is, upsettingly enough, the obvious goal here--Steve's clearly even more apples short of a basket than he was in Hawaii, is all-too-obviously hanging by a thread. He twitches at little noises as they talk, jerks his eyes toward the door every six seconds, holds himself too taut; Danny hates it, hates him, hates everything as he sits there and lies.

He tells Steve he'd met his father on vacation a few years ago, when he'd blown out a tire on the side of the road. He cobbles together details about the man from Steve's descriptions of him, is able to make it sound convincing because of Steve's trust in him, and that, more than anything, makes him feel like an asshole. Steve listens to him almost greedily, desperate for any news of his dad. Danny keeps it as brief as possible--they'd gotten to talking, Mr. McGarrett had bought him a beer, they'd exchanged numbers and parted ways.

"He said he was working a delicate case," Danny finishes, shrugging. "Said it wouldn't hurt to have a cop on the mainland on his call list. We kept in touch; I was really sorry to hear that he'd passed. When I saw you, I just…I thought I'd express my condolences, you know? That's all."

"But," Steve says slowly, "you knew me on sight. How--"

"He sent pictures," Danny says, hoping against hope that Steve doesn't ask to see them. He should--but doesn't--expect Steve's poker face to crack again, leaving him looking at Danny almost hungrily.

"He did what?" Steve says, and Jesus, who is this guy, his voice almost cracks on it. Danny stares at him for a second, wrestles down the desire to kiss that expression off his face, and can't help but throw him a bone.

"He was so proud of you, man," he says. This Steve obviously needs to hear it--whatever this Steve has been through in the last year, getting closure on the topic of his father clearly hasn't been part of it. "He talked about you all the time, you and your sister. I've never seen a guy so proud of his kids."

"Huh," Steve says. He coughs hard and looks away; the line of his neck stands in sharp relief against his black-shirt. He's pale--or pale for Steve, anyway--and Danny notes that there's another scar there, peeking out near his collarbone.

"Thanks," he says finally. He stands, and his eyes are red around the edges, the way he always looks when they're working a case that gets him in the gut. Danny sticks his hands in his pockets to keep from poking at him, bites his tongue against some kind of distracting joke. "That's--thanks. Sorry about the, you know."

"Don't worry about it, babe," Danny says, quiet. He freezes the second the endearment comes out of his mouth, but this, apparently, is just the same--Steve doesn't even register it, clearly assumes it's just a Jersey speech tic he can ignore.

"Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll let you get back to work," Steve says. He coughs again, and oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Danny'd only meant to make it a little easier on him, not actually break him down in the middle of the Jersey PD interrogation room. He wonders how long it's been since Steve was on the receiving end of any kindness, how long it has to have been since anyone just talked to him, for this kind of reaction to crop up.

"Sure," Danny says. "That's--yeah, I probably should. But let me know if you need help on this…on catching whoever it is you're catching, alright? My guys don't like new people so much, but I'm around if you, uh, need me or anything."

Steve doesn't say anything, just nods curtly in acknowledgement and slips out of the room.

Danny sits at the table, staring down at the wedding ring on his left hand, for a long time before he gets up.

He reads Grace a story that night, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and tries not to notice the way she doesn't laugh when he does funny voices for each of the characters. She's asleep before he's even halfway through, out cold against the pillow, and he presses a kiss against her forehead before he turns out the light.

"Danno loves you," he says, and it echos back at him in the quiet room, mocking him in the darkness.

Rachel's at the kitchen table when he comes out. She's drinking tea from that chipped mug she always loved so much, the mug he threw into the wall in a fit of vindictive rage the night she left him, and wearing one of his t-shirts. It's too big on her; it hangs down over her bare thighs, a sharp contrast to the laptop open in front of her, casting her face in blue-green light.

"Rachel," he says, and when she looks up her eyes are sharp, like she's waiting for a fight. "What're you working on?"

"Why do you ask?" she says, suspicious.

Danny breathes out hard through his nose. "Curiosity?" he suggests. "General interest in your life? You know, the usual."

"An interest in my life," Rachel snaps, "is not exactly the usual," and Danny just can't take it anymore, can't hold it in any longer.

"What happened to us?" he asks. He means it to come out--well, he's not sure how he means it to come out, actually, but he certainly didn't intend for his voice to break on it that way. "I mean, when did we--when did we get like this? We used to be so…god, Rachel. Where did we…when did this happen?"

She sighs, stirring her tea. The spoon clinks against the side of the glass and Danny thinks about Steve saying "I like tea," in her mansion in Hawaii, thinks about the way she smiles at Stan. This isn't his life, this can’t be his life, but he wants her answer anyway. He's wanted to know for years, if he's honest with himself, but it was one of those questions he never got up the courage to ask.

"I don't know," she says finally. When she looks up at him again the anger's bled from her face, and she smiles, a sardonic little curve in the dying light. "I don't know that I ever knew."

He stoops down then, leans across their kitchen table, the grain of the wood itching against his palm. He kisses her as gently as he knows how, parting his lips easily against hers, running his free hand through her hair. It matches up with his memories of her, the ones he hasn't beaten to death in the wake of what's happened between them, but it's off, too. He wants to be kissing thinner lips than these, wants to be swearing and laughing about Miranda rights, wants to be looking up into Steve's smirking face with the sound of the waves at his back.

She's the one who pulls away, in the end. It's been too long and not long enough, and she rests her hand on his cheek, still warm from the teacup. He stares at her, at the creases around her eyes, at the way she's biting her lip to keep it from quivering, and aches from his toes up. He wonders how he could have gone through a whole divorce with this woman, could have watched her pack their things and take their daughter and marry someone else, and missed this. She looks so sad he feels like drowning; she looks so sad he wants to die.

"Rachel," he says, "god, Rachel, I'm so sorry."

"That makes two of us," she whispers. Her accent's clipped, her voice is strained and shot to hell, and Danny wants her to be happy in ways he hasn't since she first started to slip away from him. "But I suppose it's rather late for that now, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Danny says, "yeah, I guess so."

She sighs again, a low, long-suffering sound, and closes her laptop. He takes the teacup from her and puts it in the sink, and she nods at him and slips towards their bedroom.

When she shuts the door, he doesn't try to stop her.

Steve's in his driveway the next morning.

Danny didn't sleep that well, okay, because the couch wasn't exactly comfortable and reminded him far too much of his shitty apartment in Hawaii. He kept jerking awake, relief wild in the back of his throat, and realizing he was still in Jersey.

He'd never expected that to be such a disappointment. He'd never expected that to keep him up at night.

In any case, the point is that he comes out of his house and Steve McGarrett is leaning against his car, grinning in that cock-sure way he does right before he does something really stupid, and Danny more or less trips down the stairs. He's tired, and he's not expecting it, and it's such a shock to his system that his legs just kind of stop working right. He pitches forward and only misses faceplanting because Steve's got a hand on his shoulder, on his waist.

"Alright there, Williams?" he says, pulling back as soon as Danny's balanced. Danny finds himself longing for the handsy mess that is his Steve, but he nods anyway, shakes himself off.

"Yeah," he says, "yeah, I'm fine. What're you doing here?"

"Well," Steve says, "the way I see it, I need a partner. This guy I'm tracking down--Victor Hesse, that's his name--he's good about tapping into a network of people that know the area. My father trusted you, so I figure I might as well, you know?"

"Just to be clear," Danny says, swallowing to keep his voice from catching at the surrealism, "and not that I'm objecting or anything, but I just want to know--do I have a choice in this, or are you railroading me into working with you like I'm your personal property?"

"The latter," Steve says, wild grin still in place. "Now get in the car, we've got things to do this morning."

"You can take the asshole out of Hawaii," Danny mutters to himself, walking around to the passenger side of the car, but he's grinning like a maniac.

In his first six hours working with Steve again, Danny is shot at, thrown into a wall, called four different vile names, threatened at knifepoint, and mildly concussed.

"You're making that last one up," Steve says, taking a corner too hard and knocking Danny's head into the window. "You can't claim concussion every time you get a little bump, people will stop believing you."

"This is not The Boy Who Cried Wolf," Danny snaps, mostly for show. The truth is, he's never been so happy to be in screaming pain in his entire life. "This is a head wound. I didn't take you as the type to let your men suffer in silence, huh, McGarrett?"

"This is suffering in silence?" Steve asks, the edge of his mouth quirking up. It's not as lighthearted as it would have been, once--there's still enough of an edge in his voice that Danny can tell at least some of his annoyance is real--but he remembers this, remembers this process. He and Steve had genuinely pissed each other off at first, but they'd grown into it, gotten comfortable. Danny remembers how it happened, so he figures he can speed it along a little.

"You are heartless," he says, flopping back against his seat and wincing. "Cruel and heartless. They don't teach you compassion in the SEALs?"

"They don't teach to suck it up in the Jersey PD?"

"I'm just saying," Danny says, magnanimously letting that one go, "if I'm concussed because you're the kind of crazy bastard who likes to charge into situations without backup--"

"Brought you, didn't I--"

"Without backup other than me," Danny amends, giving him that one out of the kindness of his heart. "But yeah, if I'm dying of a brain bleed right now, you're going to feel pretty fucking stupid, huh?"

Things Danny is going to have to file away for the future: Steve in this reality has a hell of a guilt complex. Before he can even mention that he was kidding, for fuck's sake, Steve is wrenching the car across three lanes of traffic to park it on the shoulder.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST," Danny yells, his grip white-knuckled on the door handle. "Oh my god, McGarrett, what the fuck is the matter with you, are you actually trying to kill me--"

"Look at me," Steve snaps. Obligingly, Danny turns his glare to the left, expecting the fight to continue. Instead Steve takes Danny's face in his hands and leans in, and for a second--for a second Danny thinks--

"Follow my finger with your eyes," Steve instructs, cupping Danny's chin and holding him still. And Danny would argue, he would, except that his skin is on fire where Steve is touching him, except that he's almost got a contact high just from this. He follows Steve's finger back and forth and tries to control his breathing as Steve runs him through a quick barrage of hearing and memory tests. He doesn't move his hand from Danny's chin, and once, just for a second, Danny thinks his can feel Steve's thumb brush ever so lightly against his throat.

"Right," he says finally, pulling away, "so, you're not concussed, you're just whiny."

Danny's having some trouble controlling his urge to launch himself across the car and attack Steve like a wild animal; he wrestles it down, barely, and coughs.

"Yeah, well," he says, "I'd rather have been concussed than be driven across the highway like that, I mean, Jesus, don't you have any self-control--"

"There really isn't anything you won't bitch about, is there?" Steve asks, slanting a genuinely amused smile at him. Danny decides, in an absent sort of way, that he's going to go ahead and hold onto this moment for the rest of the day.

"I'm just saying," he says, "I'm a father, you can't be all--"

"You've got kids?" Steve asks, pulling the car back out onto the road. "I didn't know that--good for you, man. How many?"

It takes Danny a second to answer, because he has to remind himself to breathe. He should have anticipated this--of course Steve doesn't know about Gracie, hell, he only met Steve two days ago--but it winds him anyway, hits him like a punch to the face. He's angry, just for a second, a white hot flare of it; he wants to grab Steve and shake him, remind him that he helped Grace with her science project just last month, took them all to the North Shore afterwards to watch the surfing.

"Just one," he says, when he feels like he can talk again. "Gracie--Grace, my daughter. She'll be nine in a couple of months."

"Good for you," Steve repeats, in that same dispassionate tone, like he's interested in that obligatory way circumstance requires. Danny's grip goes white-knuckled on the door handle again, but this time it's mostly in an attempt to restrain himself from doing something stupid, something like howling his anguish out the window towards the Jersey shore.

"You," he says finally, and has to clear his throat. "You'd like her."

"Yeah, man, I'm sure," Steve agrees, his eyes never straying from the road.

It only takes a week of working with Steve before Danny notices a couple of things.

The first is that, for the first time in his professional career, he's having some trouble remembering the details of the case. He knows they've been to see a whole cabal of derelicts, the who's who of the Jersey criminal network--they got their hands on Frank Salvo two days in, and Danny'd all but jumped out of his skin to see the man alive. He remembers the meetings but not the details, remembers Steve's crazier interrogation tactics but not the information they produced.

He doesn’t even care that much, is the worrying part. He keeps forgetting to be stressed about it.

He mentions it to Steve, in the car on a stakeout on the sixth night, and Steve's face goes blank for a second. When he blinks back to himself, he answers a question Danny didn't ask about his coffee preferences, and it takes Danny an hour and a half to realize the topic was dropped.

It gives him hope, in a pained, oblique sort of way. Either he's losing his mind or there's something off in this reality, something that might mean he'll get to go home one of these days. He tries not to cling to that, tries to keep himself from thinking of the island and his life there as something he wants, because he's never been much of an optimist and he's not really prepared to start now. It's hard, though. He wants to take every moment he can't remember and cherish it; he wants to take everything he's forgotten and use it as evidence in the court of not my life.

The second thing he notices, rather more rapidly than the first, is that this version of Steve is a far larger mess than the Steve he knew in Hawaii. He'd known that from the get-go, of course, but it just gets clearer as the time trickles by, as they spend more and more time together. Steve in Hawaii had wanted Hesse, had pushed every angle on every case to the breaking point, but this Steve isn't like that. This Steve is so desperate to catch Hesse that each dead lead they hit shows on his face, like it's gutted him.

And then there's also…well. Island Steve, Five-0 Steve, Danny's Steve--he'd been a little socially challenged, definitely, a little rough around the edges, especially at first. Danny'd had to apologize for him on more than one occasion, and he'd had to get used to the way Steve always wanted to stay a little later, push a little longer, anything to keep from going home. Eventually he'd figured out Steve was lonely, which had lead to Danny and his stupid bleeding heart dragging him out for beers and barging into his house uninvited. And somewhere in the process there, in the act of being big and loud to distract Steve from his demons, Danny had discovered Steve was doing the same for him, just in slightly less…traditional ways.

To a certain degree, the fact that they'd ended up sleeping together was almost a foregone conclusion. It would have been nearly impossible to get that wrapped up in someone else's life and not end up wanting them, especially when that someone was so damnably attractive to begin with.

But this Steve…oh, god. Danny knows what he needs, because he's done this before, but he doesn't think even he can be big enough and loud enough to drown out this Steve's problems. This Steve never settled down after his father died, never stopped to take a break and process, never stumbled over confessions of grief in Danny's Camaro after one drink too many. This Steve hasn't seen his sister in over a decade and this Steve never got the catharsis of emptying his gun into Hesse's chest, regardless of the fact that it didn't stick. This Steve hasn't had anyone to talk to, anyone to listen to, any distraction except the hunt for an entire year, and the toll it's taken on him is obvious and terrible.

So Danny starts spending more time than he should at the office. Danny starts staying late, ignoring the worried mutters from Mikey and McNally, to make sure he's got Steve's back. Danny starts dragging Steve to bars and restaurants, starts demanding to know when the last time he has fun was, starts bringing him donuts and coffee in the mornings to round him out a little. He knows he should be at home with his wife, but it's a losing battle; he knows he should be at home with his daughter, but looking at her breaks his heart, makes him want to scream and rage and kill until he can find a way to light her up again.

Steve's a problem he can't solve, but a smaller one than all his others. Danny throws himself into fixing him like it's a full-time job.

He should really see it coming before it happens, is the point. He remembers the last time he felt this way, like he had to stay at the station, like going home was a curse or a death sentence or something; remembers the last time his back ached from sleeping on the couch and his skin itched with a pervading sense of failure. He remembers it, he does, but he's been trying not to for so long that it blinds him a little, makes him blot out details he shouldn't miss.

He should really see it coming, but he doesn't, and that's why he comes home a month after Steve pops into his life to find Rachel with an open suitcase, slamming drawers.

"Rachel," he says, staring.

She looks up at him, and there are tears streaking her cheeks, and oh, god, he remembers this too. He remembers this moment, exactly this moment, like it's a police sketch or a photograph laid out in front of him. She's wearing the same clothes she was the first time--it's even the same pair of shoes in her hand, Jesus--and he knows what she's going to say before she says it.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I don't want to be this person, I don't want to--I hate you, I don't want to hate you but I do, I can't help it and I--I never wanted it to be like this, but I have to, I have to go, Danny, I have to."

Danny swallows and swallows again, feeling tears prick up behind his eyes. This shouldn't hurt the way it does--he's already lived it once, should be comforted to know that this would have happened to them in any reality--but it's still almost deafening, the roaring in his ears. Distantly, he remembers the way he'd screamed at her the first time around, both of them sobbing and furious before the end, the way Gracie's panicked wail had echoed through the halls after they were gone.

This time he steps forward and pulls her into his arms, bites down on the things he could say and just holds her there, sobbing into his shoulder.

"It's okay," he says, rubbing her back. Rachel shakes harder against him, and he thinks again of how sorry he is, of how much he couldn't let himself see before. "It's okay, babe, you don't have to be unhappy, we shouldn't have to be unhappy. I don't want to be this person either, Rachel, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's okay."

He helps her pack, quiet for once in his life, trying not to hate himself as he remember the way he'd thrown things last time. He helps her pack and calls her a cab, loads Grace into the car after her with a hushed, cautious hand.

"You and Mommy are going to a hotel, okay, Monkey?" he says, and she's hugging him too tight, her tiny hands fisted in his shirt. She'd cried, last time, cried like she was never going to stop, but this time she’s silent and terrified, like she knows what it means. He knows she's older, has lived with it longer, has probably been waiting for it, but her resignation still makes something twist inside him. Her eyes are dry when she pulls back, but the expression on her face is years too old, and he tucks her hair behind her ears and tries to smile.

"Where are you gonna go, Danno?" she asks. It's barely above a whisper, but he hears it anyway.

"I'm gonna be right here," he tells her, "right here at the house, and you'll still see me all the time. Some things are gonna change, baby, but I love you and there's nothing that could change that. You know that, right? You know that Danno loves you?"

She nods, and he can't help but pull her into one last hug.

"Say it for me, okay? So I know you know."

"Danno loves me," Gracie says, and she is crying a little now, he feels it against his cheek as he pulls away.

"Good girl," Danny whispers. He kisses her and steps back, rests his hand on the cab door. "You be good for your mom, okay? And I'll see you soon, I promise."

She stares out the window at him as the cab pulls away, twists in her seat to wave at him until the car turns the corner. Danny stands in the street for a long time, his stomach churning, before he goes inside.

His phone is ringing on the kitchen table when he shuts the door.

"Williams," he answers.

"McGarrett," Steve returns, in his business voice. "Got a lead. I'll be at your place in five."

"Okay," Danny says, sinking into a chair and resting his head in his hands, "yeah, Steve, alright."

He doesn't tell Steve until three days later, and even then it only comes out because they're a little drunk.

"It's not that big a thing," he says carefully, when Steve's face twists into that self-recriminating expression he hates so much. "We've been heading towards it for years, believe me."

"But if I hadn't--if you'd spent less time with--" Steve says, and then shakes his head like he's trying to clear it. "Williams, man, I'm really sorry."

"Why do you call me that?" Danny asks, before he can help himself. "We've been working together for a month, you'd think you could use my first name."

Steve smiles, a small, sad thing, into the neck of his beer.

"It's easier," he says. "I'm never--you know, I'm not on land very often, right, and it's easier not form attachments. You're--you've been really great, right, really helpful, but at some point we're gonna get Hesse or he's going to leave Jersey, and then I'll have to go too."

"You think you're not gonna miss me if you call me by my last name?" Danny jokes, trying not to let all the panic behind it slip into his voice. Steve is going to leave--Steve is going to leave, and then Danny's going to be stuck here with his empty house and his empty life, with nothing but memories of a time that maybe never existed to keep him company. It's not exactly a pleasant thought.

It takes him a minute to realize Steve hasn't answered; when he looks up Steve is staring at him, his eyes wide and fierce. They've both had a couple beers too many, and Danny swallows hard against a sudden influx of his past. It's like a phantom ghosting over him, the images of Steve's hands, of Steve's mouth--

"I think I'm going to miss you one way or the other, Danny," Steve says, his voice hoarse. "It's just a question of minimizing the impact."

Danny shouldn't kiss him. He should not kiss him--they're sitting in the bar of Steve's hotel, where anyone could see them, and he's three days off his wife leaving him and in love with a different version of the guy. He shouldn't kiss him because it's frankly blatant abuse of the knowledge he has about Steve, of what he knows of all those Navy boys Steve told him about after-hours in Hawaii, and he should wait until this Steve tells him that, shouldn’t take advantage of his circumstances.

He shouldn't kiss him and maybe that's why he does, curling his hand around Steve's neck and drawing him in, biting at his lower lip the way Danny knows he likes.

Steve growls into his mouth and kisses back, and even this is wrong--his Steve doesn't kiss like this, like he's mounting an attack, like he's so achingly hungry for the contact that he'd climb inside Danny's skin. His Steve kisses a thousand different ways, playful and intent and soft and searching, but never selfishly; his Steve treats sex like a game or a competition or a declaration, but never, ever like a mission.

But it's still Steve, right, he's still basically the right size and shape under Danny's hands, he still makes the same noises and grinds forward the same way. He's not good enough, but he's better than anyone else would be, and Danny will take what he can fucking get. They're pawing at each other in the elevator faster than even Danny can believe.

"This is so stupid," Steve says against his neck, "oh, fuck, Danny, I shouldn't, we shouldn't--"

"Too fucking late," Danny gasps, and cups Steve's cock over his pants, grinning a little at the noise Steve makes in return. "Might as well take our chances while we've got them, McGarrett, don't back out now."

Steve groans into Danny's hair and drags him off the elevator, fumbling for his wallet in his pants pocket. "God, you are like--you are just--I have no idea why I can't control myself around you, I never do this, I don't--"

"You really have no idea," Danny says, nipping at Steve's neck, "really, no idea at all, what you're talking about. Jesus, Steve, the things I want to do to you--"

Steve groans and pushes him off just long enough to get the hotel key into the lock, and then they're kissing again, clawing at one another in the doorway. Danny hears the door click shut, but Steve's got him up against the wall, both hands on his face, kissing him fierce and hungry. Danny grinds back into him and it's terrible, it's not even close to enough, but it's so much better than anything Danny's had in weeks--

"Well, well, Steve," says an accented voice from the bowels of the room, "I must admit, this is rather a surprise."

Danny's not entirely sure how he ends up on his knees, with his hands zip-tied behind his back, watching three guys wrestle Steve into submission.

Well, empirically knows how it happened. Steve went reeling back from him, sure, and neither of them was at their most focused, and Hesse's men descended like locusts, peeling out from every corner. Danny knows this, knows they would have gotten the jump on Steve regardless, but it still seems impossible to watch it happen. He's struggling uselessly against his own bonds and trying not to stare at the blood pouring out of the side of Steve's face as two henchmen finally get his hands behind his back and pin him to the ground.

"You motherfucker," Danny spits, tasting copper.

Hesse smiles at him, understated and winsome, like he's just taken the lead in a particularly trying game of chess. He looks better than he did the last time Danny saw him--but then again, the last time Danny saw him he'd been freshly recovered from the slugs Steve put in his chest.

"Are you going to tell me I'm not going to get away with this?" he asks, his head tilting in amusement. His accent rolls off his tongue in waves, hitting harder on certain vowels, and Danny's never hated anyone so much in his life. "Because I must say--while I am, of course, going to get away with it--you did make the whole thing rather easier, didn't you? If I was Captain McGarrett, I'd start doubting your loyalties."

"Jesus, you guys are all the same, aren't you?" Danny says, because he's always been good at running his mouth and they need to buy some time. "Always pushing for another thing, right, another little victory, and yeah, okay, you caught us in kind of a compromising position, I'm not denying that, I'm a little embarrassed over here, but the mind games seem kind of unnecessary, you know? Plus, I'm just saying, hotel room grab, not your classiest move ever, all your talk and you'd think you could try something a little--"

"You are a mouthy little man, aren't you?" Hesse asks, narrowing his eyes. "You've served your purpose well enough, I'm sure, but I'm not particularly interested in your prattling. Gag him."

"Like hell you--" Danny starts, but then they're putting duct tape over his mouth. He struggles against it for a second, trying to speak around it even though he knows, he knows it's pointless, and then falls still. He settles for glaring, but Hesse has turned to Steve, his expression going hard and unforgiving.

Steve, being Steve, doesn't even look afraid. You stupid shit, Danny thinks, if we get out of this I'm going to kill you.

"Now, Steven," Hesse says, pulling a gun off the side table and turning it over in his hands, "I have to say I'm a little disappointed. I was looking forward to a real fight, here--didn't anyone ever teach you not to let your guard down in times like these?"

Danny only sees the flinch because he's looking for it--he recognizes that comment for the dig it is, and the muscle spasm under Steve's eye says he sees it as the same. Steve holds himself ramrod-straight anyway, never one to cave in any reality, and smirks up at Hesse.

"So let me go," he says. "I can chase you down properly, and you won't have to spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have taken me in a fair fight."

"I'm sorry," Hesse says, "did I give you the indication that I enjoy fighting fair?"

He walks over to Danny, tapping the gun against his thigh, and fists a hand in his hair. Danny tries not to wince when the cool metal of the gun barrel comes to rest against the side of his throat, but he can't help himself; it's a quick thing but Steve sees it, and his poker face cracks at once.

"Don't," he snaps, "look, don't, if it's me you want then take me, that's fine, but he didn't--"

"You know, I'm not a man of many regrets," Hesse says. He rubs the edge of the gun against Danny's face almost absently, and Danny wishes his mouth was free so he could bite this motherfucker. "But the way I killed your father--I should have worked that better. It would have been far preferable if I could see your face, don't you agree?"

"I am going to kill you," Steve growls, low and intent. "I swear to god, Hesse--"

"I find that rather unlikely," Hesse says, and he's whipping the gun towards Steve and firing before Danny has the chance to so much as cry out.

The bullet hits Steve in the shoulder; he moans, obviously against his will, and slumps back against the wall. Danny can feel blood seeping out around his wrists where he's pulling at his zip-ties, can hear the sounds of his own screams, muffled through the duct tape.

"Oh, I am going to enjoy this," Hesse says, stepping over Steve's body and grinning down at him. He shoves the barrel of his gun into Steve's mouth and Danny's howling, screaming bloody murder under the gag, pulling at his bonds like his life depends on it but it's not going to be enough, this bastard is going to kill Steve and then him and he can't stop it, there's nothing he can do, and--

"Shut him up," Hesse barks, and Danny's being pistol-whipped, his vision blacking out as he hears the sound of gunfire.

The afterlife, upsettingly enough, looks a lot like the inside of Kamekona's shave-ice stand.

Danny blinks up at the ceiling, his tongue thick in his mouth, and tries to get his bearings. He can't actually be dead--if he is, it's an awful lot like being alive--but his hands are free, which is in and of itself a surprise. He'd expected bindings and runs his fingers across his wrists, looking for the cuts the zip-ties would have left. There's nothing there, and when he reaches up to touch his head there's not so much as a scab. He feels…he feels good, actually, really good, except for how his marriage is over all over again and his daughter's out there somewhere with sad eyes and his partner's dead--

"Look who has returned to the land of the living," Kamekona says, leaning over so his head is directly in Danny's line of vision. "Sweet dreams?"

Danny stares at him for a second, trying to decide between emotions. Disbelief takes the lead at first, followed by a surge of relief so strong he can hardly bear it, but as usual anger wins the day. He lifts his hands and brings them around Kamekona's throat, choking off his air supply as he stands.

"Brah!!" Kamekona gasps, waving his hands, "C'mon, brah--"

"What did you do to me?" Danny demands, shoving him into the wall. "What the hell am I doing here, I didn't--I was--what did you do, what the fuck did you do?"

"Nothing," Kamekona cries, and Danny digs his thumbs in a little harder. "Okay, something, but--can't--breathe--I'll tell you just--leggo, man, I can't--"

Danny steps back, left hand curling into a fist at his side, right hand extended to poke at Kamekona's chest. "You have five seconds."

"McGarrett is rubbing off on you," Kamekona says, rubbing at his neck and glaring. "I liked you better when you--"

"Four," Danny snaps, shoving at him again, and Kamekona puts up his hands.

"Alright, alright," he sighs. "Look, brother, I just--you're going to havta suspend your disbelief a little here, alright?"

"I just spent," Danny says, rounding out his vowels, "two months in fucking Hoboken, okay, I just watched Steve--he was--my disbelief is suspended into next year, okay, into next century, into the next goddamn millennium--"

"Oh, shit," Kamekona says, his eyes going wide. "How long?"

"You don't know that?" Danny demands. He means it to come out furious, but it ends up sounding more like a shriek. "You mean whatever you did to me isn't an exact fucking science--not that it would come down any easier on you if it was, okay, because from where I'm standing I'm pretty damn sure you drugged and kidnapped me and there's a name for that, there is prison time for that--but seriously, seriously, okay, I need to get out of here, I need to see some people like, like a long time ago, like yesterday, I have some shit to take care of that is past its sell by in a big way so you need to start talking before I fucking kill you!"

He's breathing heavily at the end of that, and when he stops talking his ears are ringing, and that's how he knows he's been yelling. Kamekona, for his part, actually looks kind of scared, which is more than a little gratifying.

"Okay, brah," he says, and then he sighs like he knows this isn't going to go over well and finishes, "thing is, right, that I'm the Sandman."

"You're the," Danny says, and stops. "I'm sorry, you're the what? You're the Sandman, is that what you said, because I thought that I heard you--what, like the guy in the picture books with the sprinkly dust, that Sandman, the fucking Sandman is your excuse for this?"

"You said you would suspend your disbelief!" Kamekona says, throwing his hands in the air. "I had this customer, alright, one of my regular Haoles during the tourist season, you know, rented a place out here--anyway, he used to come in late-night, and we didn't get so much business then, and we got to know each other, okay? And he just kind of...he was the old Sandman, but he needed someone to take over and it's interesting, right, as a side thing, and he started training me but his wife got sick, man, I wasn't supposed to take over so soon! I'm still learning!"

Danny stares at him for a second, and he knows, he knows that his mouth is working up and down like he's some kind of beached fish, but he feels pretty justified.

"You're still learning?" he demands finally, his voice cracking on it.

"It was just supposed to be a little nap," Kamekona says mournfully. "Make you see things a little more clearly, you know, it's supposed to be good for you--"

"Good for me," Danny repeats. Some of the anger is starting to drain away, to be replaced by the itching need to see Steve alive, to hug his daughter, and he needs to find out what happened here before the urge to give in to that overwhelms him. "I--just--50 words or less, okay, summarize for me what happened and I how I got here."

"I did kind of drug and kidnap you," Kamekona admits. "Only it wasn't drugs, it was the--you don't want to know, okay, brother, but supposed to be a like, a little eye-opening dream, show you that you've got it pretty good here--but then I called you and you didn't answer and I went by your place and you were still asleep and I just kind of panicked, alright? Because I knew if McGarrett found you like that he would like, he'd come kill me, brah, and I have a life expectancy, you know?"

This isn't possible. Danny knows it isn't possible, because Danny's not a complete idiot or a five year old girl, and the Sandman doesn’t fucking exist. This isn’t possible, but if he's going by the rules of basic reality he was never in Jersey, and he knows, he knows he was. It's not possible, but it resonates in him anyway, makes a strange kind of sense. He remembers that disconcerting feeling that he was forgetting details and realizes it was him picking at the edge of the dream, trying to unravel it before the strangeness slipped away again.

"Oh my god," Danny says. He rubs at his face, tries to get his bearings, and can't. "Okay, look--look, I'd really like to, um, murder you, actually, that's what I'd really like to do, but I need to--I have to go. Could you just--what time is it?"

"It's five, brother," Kamekona tells him. "And it's, uh, Saturday."

"Five?!" Danny demands. "Saturday--Kamekona, that means I slept for--"

"Twenty-six hours," Kamekona agrees, wincing. "I overdid it a little, my bad."

"I am going to come back here tomorrow," Danny says, enunciating clearly, "and I am going to ruin your life."

"Maybe I can work it off," Kamekona says hopefully. "Like a debt, right, free shave-ice for life in exchange for you not--"

"No," Danny snaps, "no, no, nothing will ever--"

He stops, and reconsiders.

"Well, wait," he says. "You got a car I can borrow?"

Danny doesn't actually consider the Jeep Wrangler he ends up in a car, because he has rules about cars like anything else. Rule one is roofs, which the Jeep violates blatantly, but it was this or the shave-ice mobile.

"Try not to dent her," Kamekona calls after him.

"You'll be lucky if I don't run it off a goddamn cliff!" Danny yells back, and peels out of the parking lot.

He drives like Steve, the music turned up loud to drown out the sound of his own thoughts, the steering wheel leaving imprints of its stitching on his hands. The sky is darkening over him, threatening one of those torrential Hawaiian downpours Danny's gotten used to despising, and he's surprised at the way his heart jumps at the thought of it. The world is familiar around him, the path he's driving well-traveled and rock solid and his, and he's grinning without even meaning to by the time he gets to Rachel's.

"Look," he says into the intercom, not bothering to say hello, "five minutes, please, I just need to see her for five minutes, I know it isn't my day but please, please."

"You don't need to sound so desperate," Rachel's voice comes back, nearly deafened by the creak of the gate opening. "I'll even give you ten minutes, if you like."

He doesn't answer her, just runs up the drive and finds her at the door.

"Are you alright?" she says, peering at him with concern. "I told your Commander McGarrett you were probably just having a sulk, but you look--"

"Fine," Danny says, looking around frantically. Something in the back of his brain pings an alert--Steve had been worried about him, worried enough that he'd called Rachel--but he can't focus on that right now. "Grace, Gracie, where is she?"

"Danny--" Rachel starts, the concern on her face deepening, but then his daughter is tearing around the corner and Danny forgets how to think at all.

"Danno!" she cries, and oh, god, she's tan and her hair is long, long the way she likes it best, and she's smiling at him. She laughs as he picks her up, shrieks in glee when he throws her in the air before pulling her into a tight hug.

"Hi, Monkey," he says, closing his eyes and breathing deep. He smells sunblock and saltwater, the remnants of one of Step-Stan's inevitable beach trips, and smiles so hard his face hurts against her hair. "Oh, god, is it ever good to see you. You're a sight for sore eyes, you know that? Huh?"

"I know, Danno," Gracie tells him, leaning back in his arms to look at him. "Ms. Applebaum at school says I'm gonna be a heartbreaker when I grow up."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that," Danny says, laughing as he puts her down. He can't help crouching to meet her eyes, and she raises her eyebrows at him, a little bit wicked and a lot fond. This is his kid, and yeah, she's gonna be a heartbreaker and probably a hellion too, if the way she plays poker is anything to go by. Give her an inch and she'll take a mile, grinning at him like she's ready for anything, fearless, feckless Gracie--hell yes, this is his daughter.

"Can I ask you a question?" she says, poking him in the shoulder.

"Yeah, Monkey, anything you want."

"Did you talk to Steve yet?" Grace tilts her head to the side, makes a face like she's looking right through him--which, hell, maybe she is, she's the most brilliant kid he's ever met and she's here and his and happy, thank god, thank god. "Because I love you, Danno, but he seemed pretty sad when he was here before."

"Steve was here?" Danny says. Gracie just nods, like Steve coming by looking for him is a normal thing.

"He said he wanted to talk to you but he thought you were mad at him," she says. "I don't think I was supposed to hear, but he should check the closets before he starts talking to Mommy."

"Grace, darling, it's not nice to eavesdrop," Rachel says, trying to sound stern but covering a smile with her hand. Grace looks up at her and, hey, that devious little expression is one she picked up from her mother, no question about it.

"I told him you weren't really mad," Grace confides, leaning close to whisper in Danny's ear. "Because sometimes you yell a lot but really only when you love people, right? I don't think he believed me, though, so I gave him a hug, and he seemed better after that. I think maybe you should give him a hug, okay, Danno? I don't like it when Steve's sad, he makes faces."

"Yeah," Danny says, shaking his head to clear it--because how'd his daughter get so smart, huh, how'd he get so lucky? "Yeah, I know all about the faces, baby. Thank you for taking care of that for me, that was very nice of you."

Grace gives him a high five and a kiss on the cheek and then runs off, presumably to be the best eight-year-old in the history of time in some other part of the house, which leaves Danny alone with Rachel. He needs to get to Steve, needs to confirm he's okay and alive and not that fucked-up run-down guy he's spent a month trying to heal over, but there's something he has to say first.

"You're sure you're alright?" Rachel asks, before he can even start.

"Yeah," Danny says, and then, "uh, no, actually, no, not really, I've had kind of a…look. I just, I want you to know that I'm…that I--you and Stan seem really happy, and that's really great, and I know I've been kind of…of terrible, but--"

"Did you suffer a head injury?" Rachel asks, laughing. "Honestly, who am I talking to, shall I call the Commander and tell him you've been replaced with a pod person--"

"Rachel!" Danny yells, because even when he's trying to apologize he sometimes can't help himself. Her face goes guarded at once and he swears under his breath, grabs her hands before they can start really going at it.

"Hey," he says quietly, "hey, look, I'm sorry, I'm shit at this, but I just--I wanted you to know that I--I know you tried, okay? And I don't blame you. I mean, I did blame you, at the time I totally blamed you, there was so much blame I kind of couldn't keep it to myself and I spread it around my family a little and, uh, sorry about that too--"

"You're not really helping yourself here," Rachel says, but she hasn't pulled away, and her expression is curious, bordering on hopeful.

"I'm glad you're happy," Danny says, and means it. "I'm so glad, Rachel, I just want you to be happy, and I'm--you know, no promises, I know I'm not easy to deal with but I just, I want you to know that, okay? Not that it matters, but just--happiness. I wish you nothing but happiness, alright?"

She's staring at him now, mouth open, her eyes too bright. She pulls her hands back, and Danny thinks for a second that she's going to ask if he's mocking her, that she's going to hit him. Then she throws her arms around him, draws him into a brief, fierce hug, before stepping away and smiling at him like she maybe actually likes him.

Danny smiles back.

He's at the door before she calls his name. When he turns she's got her head cocked, her brow knitted together like she's trying to figure out a puzzle, but the expression clears when she meets his eyes.

"Right," she says, "so, ah, Stan and I are having a get together for a few of Gracie's friends next week. It's just a small thing, you understand, I would have told you if it was a big party--dinner and miniature golf, I believe, is the plan. You should--bring Steve, of course, if you like--but you should come."

He looks at her for a long minute, the faint sound of thunder rolling in the distance. She looks good, she's always looked good, but the circles he's come to expect under her eyes are gone again, and the platinum wedding bands on her left hand glint faintly in the dying light. It hurts a little, knowing she's happy, for all he wants that for her--he thinks it's always going to hurt a little, that it'll always be just a little bit hard. But when she smiles he remembers the person she was and not the person she grew to be, tangled up in all the ways they turned out to be wrong for each other. He thinks he could relearn to love her like this, as his past and his co-parent and his friend. He thinks he'll be okay to grow old near her instead of with her, their daughter ebbing and flowing between them like the morning tide.

"I'd like that," Danny says, and if it comes out a little choked, Rachel doesn't seem to mind.

The rain starts halfway to Steve's, which is just fucking perfect. Danny's annoyed, annoyed at the way he can't get the roll-top up and at how he's soaked through in under a second, but mostly he's pissed that he has to go slower to avoid rolling the damn truck. He would call Steve, has wanted to call Steve since he woke up, but he knows full well that if he hears Steve's voice he'll do something crazy like steal a helicopter or spontaneously learn to teleport or burst into really undignified tears.

He just drives, the wind ripping the rain sideways into his face, and thinks almost there, Danny, almost, almost.

The sight of Steve's house, holding steady against the downpour, would be enough to bring him to his knees if he wasn't sitting down already. He cuts the engine and tears towards the front door, but he doesn't even have time to knock before Steve's wrenching it open.

"Okay," Steve says, and god, he looks pissed, off-kilter and sharp-eyed and maybe, underneath it, a little bit scared. "Listen, Danny, we need to institute a new rule about the way you handle anger, alright? Because you can be as pissed off at me as you want, that's fine, I get that, but there is a difference between being angry and vanishing off the face of the goddamn planet, there is a difference between being angry and making me worry that you've been…Danny. Danny, are you listening to me?"

Danny's not, not really. He'd like to be, honestly, because even Steve's voice sounds amazing, his vowels softer, his sentences less clipped than Danny’s grown used to--he'd like to listen but he can't, because he's a little occupied with taking in the sights. Steve's face is rounded out again, none of those sharply jutting lines that made Danny want to feed him, and his cheeks are smooth, the remains of knife-wounds that never happened vanished. His shoulders, broad and sculpted as ever, are set, but not like he's planning on a firefight any time soon. He's holding himself in the doorway with his arms crossed and yeah, he's mad, he's definitely mad, but he's also at home, barefooted and wearing board shorts under his t-shirt.

"I'm," Danny says, and reaches up a hand to touch his face. He runs his thumb along Steve's cheek, along the path of where that scar once was, and shudders.

"Hey, Danno," Steve says, and he doesn't sound angry anymore. He sounds worried, had sounded worried under the fury too, and that's all his Steve. This guy Danny's come to love, with his crazy ideas and his ninja tricks, has gotten comfortable enough here to let himself be a soft touch--he's almost nothing like that other guy, so afraid of getting close that he called Danny by his last name.

"Could you just," Danny says, cupping Steve's whole jaw in his hand, unable to pull away. "Could you just call me that again, please?"

"What?" Steve says. He catches Danny's hand, pulls it off his face and holds it, peers at him like he's resisting arrest. "You hate it when I call you Danno, you--"

"I don't," Danny says, "oh fuck, Steve, I don't, I don't hate it, please don't think that I--" and his control breaks, all at once, the floodgates opening and pouring over him. He launches himself at Steve, locks their mouths together and kisses him like his life depends on it, which, hey, right now, maybe it does.

"Danny," Steve says, pushing him back and holding his shoulders, "hey, Danno, easy, easy. What happened? You look…Jesus, hold on, okay, I'm right here, we can do that in a second, but you wanna tell me what's wrong first?"

Danny can't stop staring at him, can't stop touching him, can't figure out where to begin. His hands are roaming over Steve's torso now, sliding across his shirt like he's checking for holes, and he pauses at his shoulder, biting down against a terrible, wretched noise. It's whole under his hand, though, muscle firmly stitched together, and this is real, it's okay, he's awake now.

"Is it Grace?" Steve presses, looking out-and-out freaked. "Is it Rachel, because I just talked to her, buddy, she called to say you were coming here, so they're okay, it's okay--"

"I just need to," Danny says, and closes his eyes. When he opens them Steve's still standing there, mouth still twisted up in concern, hands still on Danny's shoulders.

"Okay," Danny says, "okay, so I need to…I need to say some stuff, Steve, okay, and I need you to let me get to the end before you get all--"

"Danny--"

"Interrupting," Danny says, laughing like he's choking on it. "Like that, if you could--can you not do that for a couple of minutes here? I know it goes against your basic nature--"

"That's your basic nature," Steve argues, apparently unable to control himself even in times of stress. Danny laughs again, and he knows, he knows how fucked up it must sound from the way Steve's fingers tighten on his shoulders, but he can't help it.

"Right," Danny says, "mine or yours, whoever's it is, can you just--no speaking, alright? None. Five minutes, that's all I'm asking."

Steve narrows his eyes for a second, but then he nods, and Danny lets out a rush of relieved breath and finds it all pouring out of him at once.

"So, thing is, I've had a bad day," he says. "Maybe the worst day ever, and I can't really--I can't explain why, because you'll never believe me, and if you did believe me it would mean the Navy knows a lot about shit that I didn't ever want to know about and I'd rather not know that, you know? But the point, right, the point is that I didn't know what I was talking about, when I said I wanted to be back in Jersey, I didn't--"

"Look," Steve cuts in, "no, don't, you were right, I've been trying to find you to apologize, I shouldn't have--"

"Shut up," Danny says, reaching up to cup his face again. Steve lets him this time, obviously struggling not to bombard him with questions, and Danny has to kiss him once, just has to, before he can go on. "Just, just shut up, because I'm not--Rachel's right about me, she is, I do say things I don't mean and mean things I don't say and so this is probably the only time I'll be able to get through this so just, complete silence, please and thank you, I'm not gonna ask you again. "

"Okay," Steve says, confused but quiet. "Okay, Danno, go ahead."

"I'm never going to like pineapple on pizza," Danny says. "Because it's--it's wrong, okay, there shouldn't be pineapple on pizza, and I'm not really much of a sand guy, it gets into places that sand should never be, and I'm. I'm not cut out for island life, I never was, I'm a city kind of guy, and I'm always going to want to vacation to Jersey and I'm always going to want to be there, a little bit, except that I didn't--I didn't understand, right, that when people say you can't go home again it's because they mean you've gone and set up home somewhere else by mistake."

Steve's keeping his promise to be silent so well that Danny's actually nervous; his face is blank, that guarded neutral he uses when he's trying not to get something wrong. And oh, god, Danny's such a coward, but he closes his eyes, has to close his eyes, can't finish this when Steve is looking at him like that, so careful and so close.

"Or maybe that's not what they," he starts, and shakes his head. "But it's not about the island, right, it's about Grace and Rachel and that I'm--I'm stupid in love with you, okay, d'you understand, the amount of love I have is so stupid that it actually hurts in my soul because one of these days you're going to get us both killed and then I'll have to defend your stupid reckless ass in the afterlife, that kind of love, and I don't want you to change and I don't want to leave. And I'm a selfish person, okay, on a basic level, I like things the way I like them and the thing is, Steve, the crazy thing is that I don't even care if you love me back--I mean, look, obviously I care, I care a lot, but if you don't that's okay, we just need to--you just need to stop fucking me, if you’re not--because you need to find someone who makes you happy, because I just--I need you to be happy, I know I sound crazy but I need to know, I need to know that you're okay and that you're not tearing yourself up inside and that you're--"

"Hey," Steve says. His voice is soft, open, and it's that more than anything that makes Danny open his eyes. But oh, Jesus, he's glad he did--Steve's face has broken open into that grin Danny never managed to worm out of the other him, the big goofy one that takes over his face.

"Danno," Steve says, "I am happy."

It would be nice, Danny thinks vaguely, if he could turn this moment into something classy and elegant. It would be nice if he could lean in and kiss Steve like a guy out of a storybook or a sappy movie, so later he could look back and feel like he'd done right. It would be nice, but Danny's not really that kind of guy and Steve certainly isn't, so instead…

…well, instead he stares, dumbfounded, kind of not believing his luck until Steve grabs him by the back of the neck and hauls him inside. Danny more or less falls into him, dripping everywhere, hands roaming.

"Never did learn to dress for the weather," Steve says, kicking the door shut behind them as he tries to undo the buttons on Danny's shirt.

"Never will," Danny agrees, and leans in to run his tongue along Steve's neck. He smells, tastes, like saltwater, like his morning surf, and Danny bites down a little just because he can. Steve rips his shirt open in response like the animal he is, all bad decisions and brute force, laughing into Danny's hair when he squawks in protest.

"I thought you wanted to make me happy," Steve says, grinning down at him. "You being naked? That makes me happy."

"I'll give you happy," Danny snaps, half-annoyed just for the sport of it, and tackles Steve into the wall.

The thing is, though, that he can't sustain it, can't even keep up a pretense. He pulls Steve's shirt over his head and his hands stumble against Steve's chest, trying to touch everywhere at once, and his heart feels like it's going to burst out of his chest. Steve must see it on his face--Steve knows him well enough to tell, Steve knows him, Steve knows him--because they're kissing again a second later. His lips are soft against Danny's mouth, soothing, and his hands run up under the ruins of Danny's shirt.

"Just take it off," Danny gasps, "just--I don't even care, I just, Steve, I--"

"I know," Steve says, pulling the sodden remains of his shirt loose. "I know, Danny, me too."

They stumble to the couch, bare chests pressed together, urgent like they've never been before. Steve's got the upper hand because he's dry and shoeless, not tripping over his squelching loafers the way Danny is, so he throws Danny down across it and bears down on him. And oh, god, Steve's sliding out of his pants, pulling at Danny's belt, he's everywhere at once and Danny remembers this, remembers how easy it's always been even when everything else didn't make sense at all.

"Do you remember," Danny says, senselessly, as he kicks his shoes off and toes the onto the floor, "after that case with the coke dealers and the grenade launcher, in the alley behind the--"

"Yeah," Steve says, frowning down at him as he pulls at Danny's pants. "You want to suck me off in an alley? Because, I mean, not that I didn't enjoy it, but I was kind of thinking--"

"No," Danny breathes, "no, I want you to fuck me like we just escaped from--"

"Danny, Jesus," Steve says, and leans down.

They're more or less naked now--Danny's still wearing his soaked-through socks, and Steve, being the overachiever he is, uses his feet to divest him of them without breaking the kiss. They rut against each other for a second, tongues tangled, Steve's hand in Danny's hair, Danny's fingers tight around the swell of Steve's ass, and if it hadn't been two months--felt like two months--Danny would let them come like this.

However, things being what they are…

"Lube, McGarrett," Danny says, using what limited leverage he has to pull away. "Unless you're planning on making this much shorter than it could be."

Steve laughs against his mouth, but it's soft, no mockery in it at all, like he's surprised. Belatedly, it occurs to Danny that maybe Steve is just as shell-shocked as he is, if for different reasons. He thinks about the Steve in Jersey, so starved for affection that it was like he couldn't feel it, desperate enough for someone to talk to that he nearly broke down in a goddamn interrogation room.

They're not that different, really, even if one of them was a product of magic, his imagination, whatever. This Steve, his Steve, arches around to side table, washboard abs all on display, and Danny watches the line of his his back with hungry eyes as he returns.

"See," Steve says, "the Boy Scout thing taught me all about preparation, so you can stop mocking me for it any--"

"C'mere," Danny says, running his hands down Steve's back and drawing him closer. "God, babe, I want you to fuck me, okay, and if dropping the Boy Scout jokes is what it's going to take--"

"Stop trying to make me come first," Steve groans, which isn't at all what Danny's doing, but it's gratifying all the same. He just opens the lube and slicks three of Steve's fingers, leaning forward briefly to suck Steve's thumb into his mouth. Steve groans again, but it's lower, rougher this time, and he bucks against Danny, grinding their cocks together.

"Your fingers," Danny reminds him, "my ass, any day now."

"Danno," Steve whines, and, okay, yeah, maybe he really is riding the edge, Danny had kind of forgotten what a hair-trigger he can be sometimes. He spreads his legs, pinning Steve between them, and grinds out a harsh breath when Steve slips a finger inside.

"Yeah," he says, because Steve likes it when he talks, because he's never been able to control himself anyway and doesn't see any reason to start now. "Yeah, babe, like that, just like that, oh, fuck, fuck, I can take more, I want more, wanna feel you in me, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon."

Steve's got a second finger inside him and then a third, all deft hands and quick movements, playing over Danny's weak spots like it was part of his SEAL training. Danny'd never know from his steady hands how wrecked he is, but that's the saving grace of Steve's ridiculously expressive faces--he's cracked open just from this, just from watching Danny under him, and the rush of that never seems to stop getting Danny high.

"No condom," Danny says, when Steve pulls his fingers out and gives him a questioning look. They're both clean and they've toyed with it, with the pluses and minuses of using one--usually Danny's for and Steve's against, but not this time. This time Danny wants to feel all of him, wants him everywhere all at once, and fuck the mess he'll be afterward. He pours lube over Steve's cock, getting it everywhere, and then raises his eyebrows to keep himself from begging Steve to get on with it already.

Steve moans and leans close, bites down on Danny's shoulder hard enough that it'll probably leave a bruise as he slides in. Danny doesn't care, can't spare the energy to give a flying fuck, because he's grinding up into Steve's cock and gasping out whatever comes to mind.

"Feels so good," he manages, "oh, god, babe, if you ever stop I swear I'll kill you, just like that, oh, god, Steve, fuck."

Steve makes one of the unintelligible gorilla noises Danny has discovered he's prone to while fucking; at first they only confirmed his theory that Steve was some kind of Navy robot, but he's come to realize they mean "If I focus on anything other than holding it in I'm going to come right now." He runs his hand down Steve's spine, means it to be soothing but succeeds only in making him shudder, and decides it's about time to pick up the pace.

It's desperate and dirty and quicker than Danny would like, but the sensation of Steve over him, whole and alright and not going everywhere, is more of an aphrodisiac than he'd anticipated. He's coming in long spurts all over Steve's stomach before he's even had a chance to cry out, and when he gasps, "Fuck, oh god," Steve lets out a strangled moan and collapses on him, his cock twitching with release against Danny's prostate.

"Missed you," Danny breathes against his neck, too out of it to remember how crazy it'll sound. He thinks for a second that the rain has saved him, the slowing pound of it against the roof a decent cover, but then Steve shifts a little on top of him, like he's confused.

"Never left," he murmurs. "Not planning on it, either."

"Yeah," Danny says, "yeah, neither am I."